First week of our mission in Siberia

What an amazing week…  After three days of traveling we're happy to have made it to our destination of Berdsk, Russia on Wednesday. When we arrived in New York we met up with the office couple, the Palmers, that will be serving in our mission.  It was nice to have someone else to travel with.  In Moscow we also met up with Bryce Carr, from Mt. Pleasant, who served a mission to Russia a while ago. (He's going to school there now, working on his master's degree).  He took us to Red Square where the Kremlin is and showed us around a bit. (The Kremlin is where the government leaders meet).  We're glad he was there to help give us directions and help us use up some of our 12 hour layover time. It was also very cold!

We arrived in Novosibirsk, which translates to “New Siberia”, about 5 am on Wednesday morning and were given a warm greeting by our mission president, President Gibbons, Elder and Sister Gunderson from Washington and Elder Gushin, who is the driver and is also an area Seventy.  It was cold and dark!  They took us to see to the mission office and we then dropped off the Palmer's at their apartment.

After about a 40 minute drive to the city of Berdsk, we arrived at our apartment.  President Gibbons and Elder Gushin gave us each a nice blessing and told us goodbye.  We were very tired! We had about a five hour nap and still were tired and could hardly wait for bedtime.

The two Elders serving in Berdsk had made us a fun welcome poster and had bought some basic food for our cupboards! They are a fun couple of Elders! Elder Bunnell is from American Fork and Elder Leonhart has lived several places, but most recently Tremonton. They were sooo excited to see us!  They came and took us to an authentic Russian restaurant for dinner.  They had also made some cookies for us.

About the apartment.....   We're on the sixth floor of an apartment building.  It's a nice size apartment.  It has a very large bathroom with an extra-large tub! Large enough to probably be used as a font!... We haven't quite figured out how to use the shower yet. It's a bit strange.  It's decorated mostly in red and white. 

The kitchen is small with small everything...small sink, small cupboards, small dishwasher about the size of our trash compactor at home, small microwave.  But it's great!

The front room is a bit larger than ours at home.  Just right for holding church services here. We have a small bedroom and office room with a sofa sleeper.   So come and visit!  The floors are tile and laminate wood with a large area rug in the front room.  We also have a little sun room or something like that with a heated tile floor.  We can look out from there and watch people come and go, slip, slide and fall on the snow and ice :)

Though it has been a very cold week outside, our apartment is very warm. It’s not uncommon for us to open the windows to cool it down, even when it is below zero outside. We hear that will change when they decide to turn the heat off. The whole city is heated by a central boiler system. Hope they wait a while…  it’s been below zero a good part of the time.

On Sunday, we had the little group of members from Berdsk come to our apartment for church. This is a new city for the church to be in. The city was just opened up to the church a couple of months ago. There have been the two elders here getting things going, finding an apartment for us and looking for a building that can be leased to hold meetings in. That is coming along, but it’s not quite there yet. We did have a very nice meeting with the two elders, three members and the husband of one of the members. We both talked and had the elders translate for us and that took up the meeting. We hold a two hour block here, Sacrament meeting and Sunday School. Brother Vitali, one of the local members, taught the lesson, which we understood about every 20^th word, but hopefully that will change. Sister Beck fixed a nice meal for all, which we ate after the meetings. Yep, she fed all of the members of the church in Berdsk, in our living room!

We are now getting a little better at figuring out what food is what at the grocery store. We need to have a dictionary to figure out what the food is. We have also learned that you can’t buy too much at once, because you have to pack it all back to our apartment in bags on a public transportation van called a Marshrootka. It’s always an interesting ride… Did we mention that we haven’t found anyone yet in Berdsk that speaks a bit of English. We try to ask what we think is a Russian question and they just look at us weird and shake their head. Hopefully that will change when we get a little better feel for the language. It is kind of weird to not be able to communicate.

Here are a few pictures from this first week in Siberia and from our trip here. The one cathedral with all the snow in Berdsk is just a short walk from the shopping area where we buy our groceries.

 Cathedral in Berdsk (Just a tiny bit of snow)

President Gibbons and our welcome home poster made by the young elders.

 Moscow Red Square

 Moscow

 Spelled just like it sounds :-)

 Moscow

 Moscow

 Home to our apartment after a grocery shopping trip

 Berdsk cathedral

Berdsk